I have somewhat discerned that my vocation is single life. I’d like to hear from the members of this forum of what that could mean, and what God expects of me. Please if you’d be so kind as to offer a few thoughts about my vocation, I would be really grateful.
Those who join a religious order have a period of belonging before they make permanent vows. I have a friend who joined an order and decided not to make a lifelong commitment. I suppose that a similar trial period could be appropriate when discerning and choosing a single life.
Those of us with a vocation to marriage don’t have that, but in marriage preparation we were helped to discern whether we should get married and whether we had chosen the right partner.
I think a vocation of single life can be just as much of a blessing as a vocation of marriage. I’ve met a good number of lifelong single people who are very prayerful and active in their church community and in their surrounding community.
In married life, by definition, you’re devoting yourself to others (ie your family). As a single person you can devote your life to the service of others, just in a different way.
Thankfully the Bible doesn’t teach that humans are obliged to marry and procreate.
Also, it’s painfully clear in modern society that younger generations have not been taught, have not learned that a successful marriage is based on **compromise and sacrifice **. It’s giving up the self for your spouse and in addition, your children if you have them. Even good or great marriages are far from easy. They take a ton of work. Anyone who thinks otherwise will not have a successful marriage. Also, I don’t know that blindly accepting the adage, “It’s better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.” in the context of having a spouse is necessarily true for everyone. The fact is, there are many people who have long marriages and then suffer the death of a spouse who are beyond devastated and never recover from the loss. Yes, great times they had, but the loss for some can be so tremendous that the adage can’t just be taken as a one-sided truth without acknowledging the consequence.
I bring this up because a person who is single as a vocation will not have the potentially devastating loss of a spouse and if they focus on serving others, the relationships they can form can be very rewarding.
I cannot answer this question.
I have thoughts about the rising number of singles in our modern culture. There is even a name for this new phenomena. Self-maxing is finding purpose in self. It is becoming more and more popular among women on social media.
And what they are finding is that they are beginning to feel more uncomfortable being around others and find comfort being alone.
I do not know if this is true of your situation, but it is something that is happening. And we can speculate if it has to do with the lockdowns or with a toxic feminist movement, which is trying to combat an equal toxic masculinity movement, but is really just the same movement.
God said, It is not good for man (meaning human beings) to be alone (Genesis 2:18).
So, weather that is a vocation to Marriage or to the Religious Life, I believe the single life is meant to be temporary and not a vocation in of itself.
We have done something similar to adulthood in our culture. There was a time when young people would become adults, putting away childish things (1 Corinthians 13:11-13). Now we have this sort of hybrid adulthood thing. And I am guilty of contributing to this myself. I don’t know if it is a result of my parents’ generation abusing adulthood, responsibility, and example? Or maybe I am trying to set the example for my children, but in doing so, become less adult like. Either way, it is a fun thought experiment.
When I approach to receive the Holy Eucharist at Mass, I Pray that in receiving Him that God’s grace may help me be a better Husband, a better Parent, and a better disciple of Jesus, whom we receive, “true food” and “true drink.”
I am not a feminist. If anything I am against it. I have a genetic disease which causes me to be sterile, I can’t conceive children whether I wish to or not. So one of the fundamental rules of a catholic marriage, openness to life, I simply cannot provide. If I got married, it would have to be a lavender marriage, which I’m pretty sure the catholic church does not approve of. I am celibate, I am 23 and still a virgin. Single life is recognized as one of the 4 vocations of the catholic faith. When this is the case, my vocation has to be either consecrated life, which I am 100% sure I cannot keep up with, or single life. I am not a man so I can’t be ordained, and I am not fertile so I cannot be married.
I’d counter the Biblical reference of an obligation to marry with what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7. I think people who choose a prayerful single life as a vocation receive too much pressure, guilt and even shame and that most definitely should not be the case.
The single epidemic among young people today in society at large is a whole other issue and I would agree with @Cade_One that a big part of that could be selfishness, narcissism, and lack of trust, but that’s not what your issue is at all, @sisternightingale
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thank you. I don’t think I’m among that group at all either.
Without getting into your private life, I do not know what you mean by genetic disease, but infertility does not invalidate Marriage. You can still be open to life, even if you are unable to conceive. And many couples are open to life in other ways, by adopting children in need of a loving home.
My Aunt and Uncle were unable to have children of their own and so they adopted three children from South Korea with cleft palates. My cousins were abandoned by their parents, because of their birth defects and perhaps other contributing factors, but my Aunt and Uncle were able to get them the surgery that they needed and a loving home, where they were/are provided for.
One of my cousins is in the Arts, another went to Culinary School in New York and even cooked for Hillary Clinton), and their youngest brother went to school to design video games, though he is having trouble finding a job doing this where he lives.
First, good on you for remaining pure. I commend you!
Traditionally, Single Life was not one of the three vocations recognized by the Catholic Church. Single life was until recently, has been viewed as an “interim” or default state.
Continue to Pray and discern and know that God remains faithful no matter what. Let Him lead you and trust in His grace.
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Sure you can provide! It doesn’t matter what deficiencies you were born with, but it does matter that, despite your deficiencies, you remain open to procreation. And that is “providing”.
@sisternightingale , what about researching Consecrated Virginity? That might be something you feel is a calling.
but even if I’m mentally open to it, I physically cannot be so it’s counter-intuitive
Not so. Scripture shows that physical limits never place a boundary on God. Women who were barren, past child‑bearing age, or even virgins conceived when God willed it. What matters in Catholic teaching is the disposition of openness, not the physical ability. Openness to life is a spiritual posture, not a biological capacity. And that’s why the Church asks only for the openness of the heart, trusting that God alone determines what He brings forth.
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I agree with @Mathetria directly above. The only example I can think of otherwise would be if someone has no torso (maybe they were in a very bad accident or born with an abnormality) and cannot consummate a Marriage. So short of a physical healing, this is the only example where I think an exception to the above has to be stated.
But, if you believe you are unable to have children, and are open to life, then there is not an impediment there.
I know a couple who thought they were unable to have children, and were told that they were unable to conceive a child, and so they adopted a little boy who needed a stable, loving home. Literally two weeks after the adoption was finalized, they conceived a baby girl! So, stranger things have happened, but what a blessing.
I’m not sure what leads you to believe such, but it’s incorrect. Please contact a Marriage Counselor at your local parish, or anywhere in your Diocese.
You, your family, and all those who will help your situation become clear and definitive. 
Even your extreme example doesn’t actually carve out an exception to the principle. The whole point of the Church’s teaching is that no physical condition—whether infertility, age, injury, or even missing anatomy—places a boundary on God’s creative power. Christ restored withered limbs and even restored Malchus’s severed ear, so the absence or loss of any bodily part is not a limit on God’s power; saints have worked miracles where missing organs were instantaneously regenerated. If God willed to bring forth life, the absence of a body part is no more an obstacle than barrenness, old age, or virginity.
So the Church doesn’t define openness to life as “possessing the biological structures necessary for conception.” It defines it as the interior disposition that does not willfully exclude God’s action. A couple who cannot consummate is simply unable to contract marriage in the first place; but a couple who can consummate yet is physically infertile is not outside God’s reach. The distinction is about the structure of the act, not the limits of the body.
God alone determines what He brings forth, and nothing in human biology—missing organs, limbs, any bodily part, or any other human limitation—limits Him.
Praise God! Stories like this confirm and deepen one’s faith. Thank you for sharing!
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I am sensing a theme here. I try to find where we agree and then you squash it!
There is error in what you say about, even in cases of missing anatomy. Slippery slopes. If you say that you can have a valid Marriage without Consummation, then you then must accept same-sex so-called “marriage.” And if you accept so-called same-sex “marriage” then you must accept female ordination (thus inverting Christ’s relationship of that of a husband and wife, which is life giving, to one that is lesbian and lifeless).
It is not that I am trying to limit God (which seems to be your theme). It is about respecting God and what He has gifted us with. And though you may feel good to think that what you are proposing is not limiting God, it is, in the process, perverting what God has made beautiful and good.
This is what I mean by Christians should be cautious.
A couple who cannot consummate is not Married. Two cannot become one flesh. You can play make-believe, but it does not make it so. It is a false reality.
But, if a couple who can consummate, yet is physically infertile can still be open to life, even though it is highly unlikely. And, as you have pointed out, God has answered this desire for couples to have children (illustrated in Sacred Scripture and antidotally).
I dare say that we agree on the second part.
^ This makes sense to me, your slippery slope warning in this context. God as Omnipotent can do anything ( I AM ). As such, @Mathetria believes that one should believe that God’s potential in our lives is also limitless. That’s a foregone conclusion for believers. But God never said things like he could, might, will grow limbs in people, will a birth of a baby from a mother without a uterus, etc.
I get the point @Mathetria is making, not to put limits on God, but humans are limited by our nature as finite beings. A “slippery slope” here is completely abandoning our reality that we’re rooted in and perhaps crossing the line into fantasy. Yes, God can do anything, but if we believe in things like conception or birth without reproductive organs, or that God might grant humans the gift of flight, then we can also believe that God can reverse his decision that hell is eternal with no recourse and live our lives accordingly. It would certainly make more sense from our human perspective than eternal (something we’re not capable of understanding) damnation after a life that lasts an instant, which objectively seems patently absurd.
I would like to be clear that I do believe God has the power to grow limbs in people, help couples conceive, and perform miracles. I believe Jesus did re-atatch a man’s ear after one of His disciples had cut it off in a sincere gesture to protect Jesus.
I have been accused of not being theological in my thought processes by @Mathetria, but I absolutely am thinking theologically when I caution individuals from making claims that either contradict what we believe to be trues or that may lead to contradictions, even if the intention is well-meaning. Truth matters and what is real matters.
I can give another example. Some Protestants will make the error that Baptism is unnecessary because Jesus saved the thief on the cross. Just because, Jesus can/has/does save someone outside the norms by which He gifted us, does not therefore mean that the means by which He instituted are therefore unimportant.
We are getting way off the topic of Vocation here, but that tends to happen when we begin talking about important things like God’s will for our lives and trusting in Him, while also honoring His the things that He has put in place for our good and the good of others.
I get your slippery slope point, @Cade_One Since God is omnipotent, God can literally do ANYTHING. I interpret your slippery slope point as caution to people to take that so literally that we throw aside what we’ve been given, and what we’re able to understand, etc as humans.
Case in point: Since God can do ANYTHING, then God could erase Christianity in an instant. God could reverse time and decide, for whatever reasons, that Jesus didn’t exist on Earth and to us, it would have never happened. Where do we draw the line as to what extent and to what specifically we believe?
You get it 
Not sure about all that 